


338. coliseum

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [199]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 15:18:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9331160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Why try?Sarah wants to ask.You know we’re not gonna make it – when’s the last time someone from District 10 won, huh? Or District 12? We’re screwed. Might as well get it over with now, yeah?But she’s not an idiot – she doesn’t want to give Helena an excuse to turn that knife on her.





	

No one pays attention to kids from the lower Districts, even if they make an alliance. Even if one of them has a knife. Before the countdown finished for the 22nd Hunger Games, the two of them were already discounted – Sarah, with her training score of 4, and Helena with her training score of 2 (“I sat on the floor and ate a sandwich,” she says with a shrug). Sarah should feel good about this. Sarah should feel underestimated. Mostly: she doesn’t.

The arena is in the desert, this time around; mostly everyone has taken shelter in one of the huge abandoned buildings, trying to stay out of the sun. There’s no water to be found outside. Inside, the spigots grow rust and only spit out contrary streams of brownish water. Sarah can feel the heat of the sun through the walls. God, she’s thirsty.

Next to her, Helena-from-District-10 is sharpening her knife. Sarah watched her kill three people with it. Sarah watched her save Sarah’s _life_ with it. She’s still terrified of that knife.

_Why try?_ she wants to ask. _You know we’re not gonna make it – when’s the last time someone from District 10 won, huh? Or District 12? We’re screwed. Might as well get it over with now, yeah?_ But she’s not an idiot – she doesn’t want to give Helena an excuse to turn that knife on her.

“How long do you think we can hide here,” she rasps.

Helena shrugs. “Long time,” she says. “But the shiny pretty magpie-birds want us to fight and bleed. The cells can flood. The food can run out. Many things.

“When it is time to kill the cows,” she continues peaceably, not looking up from her knife, “we herd them all into one tiny fence hallway. They moo and moo and trample each other and panic. And when they panic, they come closer to the knife.”

_In District 12,_ Sarah thinks, _it’s only the mines that eat us._ But here they are, underground. She doesn’t say that either.

“So we’re the cows,” she says.

Helena moos, low and long. Sarah takes this as agreement. She opens up the backpack she’s holding, again, just to check its insides – a shitty little first-aid kit, two packets of biscuits. One water bottle, more precious than gold. Some medicine bottle she doesn’t recognize.

There aren’t any weapons in the backpack. They’d both agreed the knife was Helena’s to kill with.

“I’d be dead without you, y’know,” Sarah says into the backpack. She can hear the slightest rustling of hair as Helena looks up. Sarah thinks about the knife.

Actually, that’s a lie: there hasn’t been a point, so far, when Sarah has stopped thinking about the knife.

“We made a promise,” Helena says, sounding faintly baffled. “To help each other.”

“You didn’t have to, though,” Sarah says. “I’m dead weight, I—” Abruptly she realizes the idiocy of it, telling Helena that it’s easier to leave her behind. “I’m just. Grateful, yeah? And sorta confused.”

“You’re different than the others,” Helena says easily. Sarah looks up. Helena’s eyes are warm, even in the weird death-mask of her face. Also: the knife. “The other children, I see them looking over their snares and their knives. They would kill each other for this. You? No. Special. You aren’t a killer, Sarah. Everybody is a killer. This I know. Only…not you.” She tilts her head to the side. “I like it.” She twirls the knife in her fingers; it’s easy there, it fits. Sarah is still reeling from what is possibly the worst compliment she has ever received. She opens her mouth, says “…thanks?”

Helena beams at her. “Yes,” she says. Sarah doesn’t know how else to respond. Helena’s smile doesn’t waver. It’s weird to think about: that Helena is saving Sarah’s life in here, over and over, and if they were outside the arena Sarah would just snicker at her from a distance. The thought is an uncomfortable weight in her stomach, like swallowing a stone.

“Glad you’re on my team,” she says faintly.

“Team,” Helena says, in a way that rolls the word around her mouth. “I am glad to be on your team, also, Sarah.”

“We’ll make it,” Sarah says. “To the end.”

“Yes,” Helena says, voice very firm. “We will.”

They nod at each other, certain, and they’re both ignoring it: the flawed logic in the word _we_. For a moment they can pretend that the Hunger Games is a two-person game – that Helena could use that knife over and over and then drop it, use her hand to pull Sarah out of this terrible death-hot arena. But it’s not. Sarah knows it’s not. This has never been a game with the word _we_ in it. Now isn’t the time to start thinking it.

But she wants to. She wants to pretend, just for a moment, so she does. She holds that _we_ between her teeth and imagines a world where she’ll never have to be afraid of Helena’s knife.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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